analytical writing

[youthman]

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how important is the analytical writing part of the GRE?? I mean I got a 1320 Q + V but a measly 4.0 on the writing. I must've had some spelling and grammatical errors. "When in doubt, don't include it." Should've followed that advice right there and kept it simple. Oh well...

I really don't want to retake it and risk my Q + V scores because of the analytical writing, unless it's really going to hurt me. What do y'all think??

 

[ReinaDeLuz]

how important is the analytical writing part of the GRE?? I mean I got a 1320 Q + V but a measly 4.0 on the writing. I must've had some spelling and grammatical errors. "When in doubt, don't include it." Should've followed that advice right there and kept it simple. Oh well...

I really don't want to retake it and risk my Q + V scores because of the analytical writing, unless it's really going to hurt me. What do y'all think??

As far as I know, most schools don't care too much about the analytical writing. I know for a fact that UF does not require it at all (though some do require you to have the score). Perhaps your safest bet would be to check and see if the school requires it, and if it does, maybe see if you can speak to a counselor there and ask whether you should retake it.

 

[youthman]

This was my thought as well, from talking to ad counselors in the past they've mentioned scoring in the "1300's" as good for the GRE but never say anything about the analytical writing part. As you've suggested, I will talk to the school advisors about it to see what they suggest.

 

[HorseyVet]

The "studies" have found the the anayl is directly related to how you did in english comp etc. Which is silly b/c why no then look at those scores/grades (that's what the books told me)...I wouldn't worry about it...I got a 6 and no one ever even asked me about it in the interviews....relative to my other scores it was much better.....maybe that helped me...

 

[wishes]

Like most other people have said, the analytical writing portion is much less important than the Q/V sections, and some schools do not even require it. If I were you I would not retake the test just to improve your analytical score.
Like you, I scored well on the Q/V sections (when I took the GRE the second time), but my writing score was only a 4.5. IMO, my rather low analytical score did not hinder me in the application process.

 

[ginkogirl]

I have not yet taken the GRE, so I don't have a "from expierence" answer to your question, but I have been studying for it for the past few months and have got the impression that graders are looking for some pretty specific things in your essays to give it a top score.

For instance, graders are told to disregard minor spelling (and gramatical?) errors, so unless your spelling and grammar was *really* poor (although I don't get this feeling from your posts) it probably wasn't a spelling/grammar issue. Silly things like length and number of paragraph are really important to graders (back to the 5 paragraph essay from middle school 😀 ) and if you were studying with a test-prep book there was probably a section regarding how to score well on the essays. I've been using princeton review's book, and their bit on how to write the essay made it seem pretty straightforward, so you may want to check it out (even if you look at it at a library or browse through the section in the book store).

This being said, you may want to consider retaking if you feel that you could do a better job on the writing during a future test and if you believe that you are likely to score similarly on the Q/V. This is all my opinion, however, and I'm not at all sure how vet schools look at the writing vs. Q/V sections.

~Lisa

 

[HorseyVet]

For instance, graders are told to disregard minor spelling (and gramatical?) errors, so unless your spelling and grammar was *really* poor.

I can barely spell my name and I did as well as possible. My spoken word is vastly larger than my written; I tried to strike a balance between big fancy words I knew (but couldn't spell) and simple ones that I could spell.

I've been using princeton review's book, and their bit on how to write the essay made it seem pretty straightforward, so you may want to check it out (even if you look at it at a library or browse through the section in the book store)./QUOTE]

I used princeton, but not really at all as they said I should. I must say though that, at least for me, it's really tough to write on something you don't care about AT ALL or better yet, when they present, in essence a cliche that they would like you to expound upoun as if it were something profound. Most of the prompts I read for practice were easy enough to talk about. The ones I got on the exam were really, well, again, cliche. I really thought I was going to do poorly b/c it seemed so phony-bologna.


My advice: make stuff up and throw up on your shoes afterwards.